Critical Systems Thinking and the Management of Complexity

3 The Life Sciences

When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe

(John Muir, nineteenth century campaigner for national parks in the US, quoted in Wulf 2015, p. 321)

3.1 Introduction

The doctrine, promoted by Descartes, that sees the workings and behavior of all organisms (except that driven by the human mind) as explicable by mechanical principles had some success in the life sciences. He was, for example, able to point to Harvey's achievement in describing how the heart pumped blood to the body and brain. By the second half of the eighteenth century, however, the mechanical model was beginning to break down both as a way of classifying and of understanding life forms. The sheer variety and vitality of life led to the development of an alternative perspective on nature in the writings of romantic poets, philosophers, and natural historians. This perspective, known as “organicism,” regards life as a special phenomenon that cannot be understood simply by using the laws of physics. Kant was a supporter of the new thinking, but he struggled with the “teleological” explanations that the life sciences seemed to demand i.e. causes understood as fulfilling some end purposes. He could accept that it was useful to see organisms as having parts that functioned to ensure their survival. But, for him, there was an unfortunate corollary – the life sciences would never be scientific because they strayed beyond what could be ...